Eurasia Insight:
RUSSIA: HOW WILL MOSCOW BEHAVE IN A MULTI-POLAR WORLD
Arkady Dubnov: 10/07/08

Liberal media outlets in Russia welcomed with relief the news of a late September meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in New York. The press emphasized the mere fact of the meeting - the first one after the Russian-Georgian war in the Caucasus - not its results. They interpreted it as a signal that neither Moscow nor Washington wanted to expand the rift between their countries.

In mid-September, Rice gave a speech outlining Washington's firm line toward Moscow in the wake of the Russian-Georgian conflict. The Secretary of State criticized Russia's "worsening pattern of behavior" and went on to describe the Kremlin as "increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad." The Russian reaction indicated that officials in Moscow are not looking to escalate the situation, as underscored by a Russian Foreign Ministry statement emphasizing that Moscow "will not go into anti-American sentiment."

At the same time, most Russian analysts do not harbor illusions that Moscow and Washington should see eye-to-eye on every issue. As Lavrov stressed during his September meeting with Rice, it is reasonable to expect that the two countries will have differences of opinion. From Russia's standpoint, though, the existing difference is something far greater than the Georgia question. It is a fundamental matter of global geopolitics.

This was a primary topic of discussion during a round table at the Carnegie Moscow Center, held a week before the Lavrov-Rice meeting. The chairman of the center's research council, Dmitry Trenin, summarized the Russian viewpoint: "Moscow wants to become an incorporator of a new world, not a participant of the world that Washington would like to build."

Such an attitude helps put into better context a comment that President Dmitry Medvedev made a couple of weeks ago during a conversation with foreign members of the Valdai discussion club. Medvedev drew comparisons between the Georgian attack on South Ossetia and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Although he did not elaborate, Medvedev appeared to mean that like the United States, Georgia's precipitous move into South Ossetia gave Russia a right to create new rules unilaterally that would govern Russian actions when Moscow perceived its national interests at risk. One may disagree with such an approach, but it's impossible to ignore.

It did not escape the attention of many Russians that for the first time in recent memory, Russian military action, specifically the incursion of Russian forces into Georgia, did not prompt the United States and the European Union to unite against Moscow. This served as tacit confirmation that the unipolar age, presided over by the United States following the collapse of the Soviet Union, has come to an end. Alexei Arbatov, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, asserted that a multi-polar geopolitical has indeed made a comeback, but added that the Russian "pole" lacks clear allies even among its immediate CIS neighbors.

A source of concern is that this new multi-polar was established without any prior discussion or arrangement, and therefore it lacks widely recognized rules of the game, or at least a tacit understanding about spheres of influence. As a result, taking the case of Georgia, both Washington and Moscow have accused each other of crossing a "red line" separating perceived spheres.

It is hard to convince the majority of Russian society that the United States has more reasons to consider the Caucasus its sphere of influence than Russia does. It is important to realize that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's rhetoric concerning the confrontation in the Caucasus resonates widely with Russians. No wonder, a recent poll conducted by independent Levada Center showed Putin's approval rating rising to an astounding 90 percent in September. And Medvedev's rating is not far behind at over 80 percent.

It's clear that Russia's leaders have revived an imperial way of thinking that experienced an eclipse during the early post-Soviet years. The most important question for the immediate future is how the Putin-Medvedev team will make use of this resource? Will they "feed" the readiness for a comeback of the empire itself, even if in a different form?

This is the question that worries far more than the liberal wing of the Russian elite. If the next target of Russian military preparations is Ukraine, speculation about a full-scale war in Europe, or even a third world war would not seem so far-fetched. Arbatov sees a need for urgent discussions to promote mutual understanding of motives and aims, as well as to set clear and firm geopolitical limits. Arbatov favors a pragmatic solution. "Ukraine is free to make a choice, but there is no need to push it to NATO by force," he said. To do otherwise would be to needlessly antagonize Russia, and push Russia in an aggressively imperial direction.

If Kyiv declined to enter NATO, Moscow could in return guarantee Ukraine its territorial integrity, Arbatov added. In other words, it could confirm that the Crimea remains an integral part of Ukraine, and that there would be no speculation regarding this in the future.

As the revived multi-polar world probes for ways to avert a potential confrontation over Ukraine, some experts in Russia are hoping the Kremlin will be restrained in its actions. The military historian Maj. Gen. Vladimir Zolotaryov, for example, recently expressed "hope that the recent order given to two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers to make a flight to Venezuela [on September 10] will be the last folly of the Russian leadership." [For additional information click here].

Editor's Note: Arkady Dubnov is a Moscow-based political analyst. His work regularly appears in the Moscow newspaper Vremya Novostey.